… is an old computer term for removing all of the software from the hardware and starting over again. Back when we could rm ‑rf we would occasionally find that a system had got itself into a non-recoverable state and need to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to function again. Or on a happier note when a project finished we often wiped the software off of the hardware and repurposed it for the next project.
While systems have become much more resilient than they used to be, and rm ‑rf is rarely available to the average user, a compete wipe down of the buggy system using rm ‑rf’s newer relative, reset to factory settings, is still the only solution to certain problems. My iPhone got into one of those states recently. Slow to load apps and data for several weeks it finally reached the point of being unable to load the App Store for updates.
Google has as many solutions for these sorts of problems as there are ways of creating them. Everything from killing the running apps to fully erasing the phone’s memory and rebuilding it from “like new.” It’s a fraught process. There is a frisson of dread and hope. You will definitely start with the simplest least destructive options but there’s always the question: What if you have to go all the way?
I found and tried a number of folk remedies. Kill all the running apps and then restart the phone. Tap any button at the bottom of the App Store app 10 times to clear the cache — that worked for about 10 minutes. Remove all of your network settings and reboot your WAP — okay so the WAP was little wedged, etc. In the end none of these worked. The last non destructive option was a full backup and restore. And easy but lengthy process that could leave the phone in exactly the same barely functioning state that I had started in. An hour and half later that’s exactly what happened.
So there I was — faced with the option of last resort. The nuke and pave. Leaving me with a blank phone without a single bit of the personality that I’d given it over the last two years. That at once wonderful and frightening prospect of a new start. There is dread. It’s a colossal hassle. You lose everything. Every setting, every App, every bit of data. Your contacts, your text messages, your fitness band data, your photos of the dog acting idiotic. All of it. It’s like losing your phone only without the cost of new hardware. A total PITA.
And yet, and yet. It is also an exciting prospect. The new, virgin terrain. All of the miscellaneous cruft and crap and useless apps and passwords for wi-fi points in airports you’ll never visit again, and oopsie pictures of your feet are gone. You get to start again with a simpler, cleaner, less overwhelming device. You will also spend the next week adding back the apps, passwords, and data that it turns out you were using but had forgotten about. You will lose all of your deeply ingrained kinetic memory, the automatic finger presses and unthinking scrolling though the pages to reach the thing that you need.
Still.. new terrain. As an adult how often do you get enter new terrain for such a small price? Sure you can change jobs, change houses, change spouses, all of which take up a lot more than a lazy Sunday afternoon babysitting a hardware reset and a couple of hours of software updates and restoring data and passwords. And so I did it. Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset All Settings and pressed the many pop-up buttons that confirmed that I did indeed intend to remake my phone into a pristine version of its now non-functioning self.
We all love the opportunity to reinvent ourselves. Even if it’s only in terms of little bit of pristine electronic wilderness that we can remake to suit our now two years older and wiser self. New phone wallpaper, a clean slate of wi-fi settings, and some nifty new apps. — Even if you end up reimporting all of the depressing fitness band data.
